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Wednesday, May 1, 2013

hobby

Managed to oversleep this morning but still scraped myself into the field at Eskilstorppsstrand at 0630. Not much doing here, very little moving overhead and just a gannet and a scattering of red-throated divers moving offshore.

Had two hours at Klarningen on the way home. Surprisingly few birds here too, the highlight being a 2K hobby circling around before shooting off on a mission. My only year-tick of the day. New birds in included a pair of moorhen and single ruff and greenshank remained.

Walking to the river I gazed enviously across the border in Laholms kommun. The wetland here is holding water (unlike Klarningen which is obviously still leaking badly) and a good-sized black-headed gull colony is building. Such colonies are the beating heart of any wetland, protecting other breeding birds by continual gull-pestering of potential predators. Black-headed gulls tried to breed at Klarningen last year but most nests were left high-and-dry and got predated by foxes. I cannot blame them for not trying again. Anyway the pools north of the river held a shoveler pair and I bet they will hold garganey this year, if they do not already...

In the afternoon we all headed out on a local walk around Sinarpsdalen. This proved to be rather good with a black woodpecker flying about and then three ring ouzels flew in and landed in front of us at one point. The low point was a nearly wryneck, flushed from the base of a stone wall and disappearing forever in the juniper.

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I am an English birder based, together with my Anglo-Swedish family, in the middle of the Bjäre peninsula in southern Sweden. We moved here from Norfolk in 2007 and have not looked back. The birding is very high quality. The number of birds that remain in the wider countryside is fantastic and the visible migration in spring and autumn is breathtaking. Fewer rare birds than in Britain no doubt, but there are fewer birders so it is mostly primary action. I only spend two-thirds of the year in Sweden though. I am lucky enough to spend the remainder of the year birding abroad.